Archives for FUBAR

The government of Iraq has announced that the private security firm Blackwater will be banned from that country.

The news that the company's license to kill will not be renewed has been accompanied by the triple assassinations in Iraq of three Sunni candidates in the upcoming elections, providing grim headlines. Blackwater spokesmen have immediately exploited the situation by stressing that their efficient enterprise could easily withdraw from the country, but that American security would suffer greatly as a result.

This is a story of bad government, children at risk and, perhaps, a glimmer of hope.

Marc Edwards is a dedicated and very smart scientist and engineer (he won both a MacArthur Fellowship and a White House Presidential Faculty Fellowship) named by Time magazine as one of the four most important scientists seeking innovative answers to the world's worsening water problems.

So-called "global warming" has shrunk from problem to punch line. And now, Leftists are laughing, too. It's hard not to chuckle at the idea of Earth boiling in a carbon cauldron when the news won't cooperate:

-- Nearly four inches of snow blanketed the United Arab Emirates' Jebel Jais region for just the second time in recorded history on January 24. Citizens were speechless. The local dialect has no word for snowfall.

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was thrown out of office Thursday without a single lawmaker rising in his defense, ending a nearly two-month crisis that erupted with his arrest on charges he tried to sell Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat.

Blagojevich becomes the first U.S. governor in more than 20 years to be removed by impeachment.

Iraq will not allow Blackwater Worldwide to continue providing security protection for U.S. diplomats in the country, Iraqi and U.S. officials said Thursday.

Blackwater's image in Iraq was irrevocably tarnished by the September 2007 killing of 17 Iraqi civilians in Nisoor Square. Five former Blackwater guards pleaded not guilty Jan. 6 in federal court in Washington to manslaughter and gun charges in that shooting.

Judith Scott probably never set out to be a First Amendment heroine. But she is as far as I'm concerned. Scott has filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia for what she claims was a retaliatory firing. Her proselytizing boss at the Blacksburg, Va. Middle School, whose acts are detailed in her court filing, kept trying to force her to participate in unlawful prayer meetings and religious events at work.

The 20th century was a time of great and terrible revolutions. The Russian Revolution of 1917 promised a communist utopia. It delivered man-made famines, the Gulag Archipelago and at least 20 million murdered. The Chinese Revolution of 1949 brought the Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution; estimates put the death toll as high as 65 million.

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has chosen, as is his right, to skip his impeachment trial by the state Senate. He is not even mounting a defense. Indeed, his high-powered Chicago lawyer quit the case, saying, "I never require a client to do what I say, but I do require them to at least listen."

For the four men sitting at the end of a bar in downtown Stuart, Florida -- on the day commemorating the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. -- Monkey Monday was the term they used to express their contempt for the holiday. And, I surmise, for black people in general.

I overheard only snippets of their conversation. But the phrase Monkey Monday -- repeated often, with great emphasis -- was unmistakable.

Six days later, at the conclusion of an unforgettable week in U.S. history, I find myself trapped in a moment in time.